My First Day of School

I remember those first days of school in elementary school: with nervous anticipation, we'd get up, put on our new school clothes, and get ready for whatever the school year would bring. My dad would always line us up to take our pictures on the front porch before we walked to school. Tuesday was my first day at school here in Ukraine, and in some ways, was much the same. Except in this case, walking to school also involved the Metro, and school was not a little tiny elementary school, but the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, and most importantly, that I was not longer the student but the teacher. Plenty of nervous anticipation still.

I'm very lucky to be teaching at Kyiv-Mohyla, considered to be Ukraine's premier university. It has a long and distinguished history, founded in 1615. It closed, for a complicated set of reasons having to do with Russian rule, in the 18th century. After Ukrainian independence, in 1991, the school was reborn. My classroom is in the main building, with its beautiful classical curved front and unlike US college classrooms, big wooden desks that are shared by students, rather than your basic plastic chair with armrest.

After filling out forms for various things and getting a brief introduction to the Department of Cultural Studies, grading and the like, it was time for class. I have 21 students, all of whom are in the final semester for their master's degree. Mostly women (just like museum studies classes in the US), and all bright, smart and articulate. The focus of their studies was incredibly diverse: reality shows, Soviet cinema, magicians, Russian literature, Jewish studies, sleeping areas (suburbs to us), horror and Soviet immigration, to name a few.

We had a wide-ranging first discussion, talking about mission and vision, but also about the structure of American museums, and museums that they had visited and found compelling in some way. Many of them have traveled and those compelling museums ranged from a Holocaust Museum in Australia to the Tate to the Museum of Sex in New York, along with a selection of museums here in Kyiv. But we talked the most about why they think most people think that museums are boring, why they are, as one student said, "a necropolis," and the fact that here in Ukraine, visiting museums is seen as something one does in school, as a child, and never again. But the funny part they said, is that the experience for those children is so often lacking in interest or engagement. (and, of course, not so different than some museums in the US—in working on history museums I've had many a community member say, "well, I visited in fourth grade!)

When I asked why they had taken this course, I learned that every final semester masters level student had to take one of a selection of a very few courses for completion—electives, I suppose, and I've ended up with the students who were really looking for something different than the usual. One said, "perhaps we are the troublemakers." Perfect! I thought—I've luckily got a group of students much like me. I'm looking forward to a fascinating semester as I suspect I'll learn as much from them as they learn from me.

And First Day at Home



After lots of apartment hunting, we have a place to live. We've found an apartment on the 9th floor of a Khruschev era apartment building in Pechersk, a neighborhood of Kyiv. It's about a five minute walk to the Metro, across the street from the War Veterans Hospital, and in a lively, busy neighborhood. It'll be nice to begin to settling in.

Top: My students at Kyiv-Mohyla
Bottom: View of the War Veterans Hospital from our apartment

Preserving Traditional Culture

I suspect a great many of my posts during the next several months will deal with issues of preserving traditional culture. This week I visited, for the first of what I hope will be many visits, the Ivan Honchar Museum. Honchar was both a working artist and collector of traditional Ukrainian folk arts. His collection was housed privately during the Soviet era, but with Ukrainian independence it has become a state museum with a deep and comprehensive collection of folk art.

I went to both meet the deputy director, Ihor Poshvailo, who I had already corresponded with, and to see, at his invitation, a children's performance. Parents are no different anywhere--I sat in an audience filled with parents, grandparents, cameras and video cameras--as a wonderful group of young people both sang and performed a traditional Christmas play. After the conclusion of this performance, we then went off to a university to see another performance by college students of the same Christmas play, this time based on ethnographic field work 100 or so years ago. These performances, which I had also seen a version of on Christmas Day, was fascinating for several reasons. First, I think Ukrainians are singers--it often feels, in the US, as if audiences--and sometimes performers--sort of drag through songs (picture what it's like when we sing the Star-Spangled Banner). Here, in every situation I've been in so far (admittedly not too many), the audience joins enthusiastically and beautifully in the songs. The story also had scarier elements than those I was familiar with--as I understand it, Herod and his henchman are taken to hell by the devil. At the college performance, they used quite amazing masks, I think of wood, for a number of the parts.

The Christmas play is a variant of the Christmas pageant familiar to me from my childhood--but it's amazing to think that, because such performances were banned in Soviet times, that there's a whole generation of Ukrainians learning this anew, going back to ethnographic work and more distant memories to recreate a cherished part of life and community here. As I thought about it, it reminded me of both the ways in which Native Americans have had to reclaim their own language and traditions, and the ways in which Ireland, particularly in Gaeltacht's like Connemara, have also worked to maintain--and keep alive--the Gaelic language and traditions. It's interesting to see how much the desire for connection and community, for a way to make sense of the world, cuts across many different cultures.

And a brief note as I continue to learn: errors or assumptions about Ukrainian life, culture and history of this complicated place are entirely mine.

Young performers at the Ivan Honchar Museum

Country Mouse in the City

For me, my trip to Ukraine is not only a switch to an entirely different country (and two totally unknown languages) but it's also a big switch from my life in a small village in upstate New York to Kiev, a city of millions. So it's the switch from getting in my car and driving somewhere (the feature of all parts of upstate life) to the metro and the bus. I've been able to build my subway, bus and marshrutka (a privately owned bus or mini-bus) skills this week, during the holidays, when fewer people are out and commuting.

I like the metro. Several of the stations have great decorative tiles although paid advertising has overtaken a great deal of space. Long, long escalators lead down to the stations, built to also serve as fall-out shelters during the Cold War. But best of all, of course, is the people-watching.



The other big switch is walking in general. When my daughter Anna spent a year in the Netherlands as an exchange student, she came home a bike rider. I think my time here will bring me home more ready to walk in any kind of weather. It's cold here, for sure, but everyone just bundles up and walks--so I do too!

City life also means an apartment. I've been staying as a sublet in an apartment of a Fulbrighter who's home for the holidays, and have spent, with my roommate-to-be, a fair amount of time this past week looking for a suitable place. It's challenging in any city, but I think particularly here, with a rapidly changing economy. We're hopeful that we find a place in the next couple days, as Michael makes many, many phone calls and undertakes negotiations with both owners and agents.

View down Khelminitsky Street on Christmas morning
Walking in the city center

Christmas at Pyrogovo

Thanks to Irina Leonenko and her fiance' Bas, I spent a cold snowy--but fascinating-- Christmas day (today is Christmas here) at the traditional Christmas celebrations at Pyrogovo, an outdoor museum village near Kyiv. Pyrogovo consists of village buildings from all over Ukraine, assembled at a single place and arranged on the landscape as if looking at a map of Ukraine (so western Ukrainian buildings are to the west, etc.). The museum is open all year, but only a few buildings were open today.

We arrived early, just as church services began in the wooden church with its incredible painted altar. Attending the service were an interesting mix of Ukrainians, traditional musicians there to sing and perform, and some tourists, including other Americans.



The service, which you attend standing, lasted almost two hours, so we listened to part of it, including singing, and then left for a quick mid-morning meal at a shynok (thanks, Irina for the correct spelling) on the museum grounds. It's a traditional tavern, with food and drink. Evidently there were several on the grounds, and the one Irina liked best wasn't yet open, but we visited another, and had tea and borscht--and took a chance to warm up on this near zero degree day.



Afterwards, we took a try at something none of us had ever seen, and which the picture above illustrates. The person standing pushes, and the sledder gets going pretty fast. That's Bas pushing Irina. Back to the church for the end of the service--with beautiful a capella music, and then outside, a small Christmas pageant. Although I couldn't understand the language, the angels, the Three Kings, Joseph and Mary were all easily recognizable. At this point, with pretty cold toes, we decided to head home. One last look at another group of singers performing for TV cameras only.



As we waited for the cab home, many more people were arriving. This was clearly a family day, with wooden sleds, picnics and food, and a sense of holiday. Most interesting to me as a museum person? No visible interpreters on site, no labels, but a museum providing city dwellers with a place to remember their family and village traditions. This is a place where meaning-making was at work. Irina says that for a long time, Ukrainian traditions were out of fashion, but now they are coming back a bit, as the country begins to define itself as a nation. So for the visitors today, it was partly about that, but also, I suspect, about making each family's own traditions of a trip to Pyrogovo on Christmas Day, to sled, to eat and drink, and to enjoy being together. What better way to celebrate the holiday? and how nice that a museum could play a role in that.

Top to bottom:
The church at Pyrogovo
Borscht and tea
Bas pushing Irina on the sled
Lighting candles in the church
More pictures to come!

My Life in Ukraine, Chapter 1

I won't take time to write much here, other than to say that I've arrived, I'm snuggled in at a temporary apartment in downtown Kiev, and, thanks to my Fulbright colleague Michael Forster Rothbart, I've learned how to ride the subway, shop in a grocery store, apartment hunt, and much, much more. Tomorrow I'm off to a Christmas day celebration at an outdoor museum, and I begin teaching next week. Stay tuned for more!

Above: One of my first sights on my first walk: the Natural History Museum.

New Year, New Adventures

I leave early tomorrow morning for the start of my Fulbright in Kyiv, Ukraine. Four months learning about a culture and a country--teaching graduate students and working with museums. I'll continue to post here about my adventures in both Ukrainian life and museums. Stay tuned!

Above: View of Kyiv, from StuckinCustoms on Flickr

Why Can't Museums be More Like City Markets?

I love all kinds of food markets: outdoor farmers markets and particularly, big city indoor markets--Toronto's St. Lawrence Market, Pike Place Market in Seattle, fish vendors under the bridge in Venice. That means one of the nicest parts of picking up my daughter from college is a visit to the Reading Terminal Market in Philadelphia. As I shopped yesterday, I realized that this kind of market has much to teach museums. What do they do well?



It's friendly--everyone can go
City markets like this one are not just the province of the educated and well-to-do, or the old but not the young, or whatever. It really does represent a cross-section of a community, I think.



Knowledge is freely shared
At the cheese-mongers, long detailed labels explain each cheese's provenance and taste--but that's not all. When I ask about different cheeses, the guy behind the counter takes thoughtful time to share his knowledge--and a taste of each. Sort of like a "curator of cheese" who loves working on the museum floor.

It embraces diversity
I'm sure the stands at the market are somewhat different than fifty years ago. Falafel and sushi now reside among the booths run by Amish and Mennonite farmers from rural Pennsylvania. All kinds of people working together (as opposed, I must say, to a recent major museum visit where I observed that all the professional staff I saw, wearing name tags, were white, and all the guards working on the floor were people of color). There probably is stratification at the market and I suspect change may have come slowly, but change has happened.



Tradition matters
At the butcher's I went to, most of the butchers were over 60; and a couple were, I'd guess, over 70. But at the same time, a young guy was learning the ropes about cutting meat and working with customers. The informal passing of knowledge from one generation to another is a hallmark of those who work there.



A market engages all your senses
It does matter what it looks like. The booths don't rely on their reputations to attract customers. Meat, produce, cheeses, and more are all displayed beautifully. You taste, smell, touch and hear--in addition to the colorful and creative visual displays.

It encourages conversation, connections and independent learning
A butcher teased me about my lack of meat-cooking knowledge--and then came out from behind the counter to give me a hug as he jokingly apologized for teasing me. I overheard other customers discussing what to make for Christmas dinner, or any of a number of other topics. (and by the way, absolutely encourages return visitation, made more meaningful by those conversations). I didn't have to take a guided tour of that meat counter, but it was my choice to learn how to cook that leg of lamb and why a leg is a better choice for me than a crown roast. Free-choice learning at its best.

And, by the way, it's free!

From top to bottom:
Reading Terminal Market sign
Center food area, Reading Terminal Market, December 20, 2008
Cheese case, by camera_obscura, via Flickr
Two of the meat guys, December 20, 2008
Tri-color cabbages at the market, by rockamandy, via Flickr